Planning Information Exchange

Information exchange forums are an increasingly common and useful way to encourage peer-to-peer learning and exchange of information. With advances in web-based meetings and seminars, an information exchange forum can reach a national and even international audience.

Planners in several disciplines participate in information exchanges, and good models exist. The Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM) and APA participate in the Natural Floodplain Functions Alliance (NFFA), of which ASFPM is a co-founder. While not formally called an information exchange, NFFA has been incredibly successful at doing just that. The central activity has consisted of webinars held every other month on issues of interest to the alliance.

Information exchange forums are an increasingly common and useful way to encourage peer-to-peer learning and exchange of information. With advances in web-based meetings and seminars, an information exchange forum can reach a national and even international audience.

Planners in several disciplines participate in information exchanges, and good models exist. The Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM) and APA participate in the Natural Floodplain Functions Alliance (NFFA), of which ASFPM is a co-founder. While not formally called an information exchange, NFFA has been incredibly successful at doing just that. The central activity has consisted of webinars held every other month on issues of interest to the alliance.

The Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 has resulted in thousands of state and local hazard mitigation plans that are largely on their second, third, or later update. Certainly, many best practices have been learned, and implementation of mitigation activities has occurred to some extent. However, few, if any, vehicles exist to facilitate the sharing of ideas, challenges, best practices, and evolving methods and techniques in planning on a nationwide scale for federal, state, and local planners and plan implementers.

With a new award agreement granted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the successful webinar series has been extended for two additional years, starting October 1, 2016. APA will continue to act as the lead in an agreement with FEMA, and ASFPM as a partner. The quarterly webinars will continue to revolve around four central themes:

• The information exchange focuses on all hazards.
• The information exchange focuses primarily on mitigation planning but also its connections with recovery planning and preparedness.
• APA and ASFPM act as co-conveners of all planning exchange webinars. This means that both organizations will use their respective web-based meeting platforms to set up, register, drive, facilitate, record, and provide technical support for all webinar meetings.
• Planning exchange hosts select topics and commit to moderate, present, and lead the planning exchange webinars.

Webinars

Naturally Resilient Communities

May 30, 2017 | 1:00–2:30 p.m. CT
(starting at 2 p.m. ET, noon MT, 11 a.m. PT)

CM | 1.5

View the webinar presentation (pdf) 

View the webinar recording

You will be prompted to enter your name and email address on the page, then click "Register" to view the free webinar recording.

Green infrastructure can play a crucial role in helping to reduce flood risk, while also providing a wide variety of additional benefits, including improved water quality, enhanced recreational opportunities, and wildlife habitat. In this webinar, planning professionals from Miami-Dade County, Florida; Milwaukee; and Pierce County, Washington, will discuss how they are using green infrastructure to address community flood risk.

This webinar will also feature a description and demonstration of the Naturally Resilient Communities web-based tools that can help your community plan for green infrastructure.

APA Hazards Planning Center Manager Jim Schwab, FAICP, will moderate as Nate Woiwode (The Nature Conservancy), Katie Hagemann (Miami-Dade County Office of Resilience), Karen Sands (Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District), Jacob Pedersen (Pierce County, Washington), and Jill Dixon (Sasaki Associates) discuss:

• The benefits of green infrastructure in managing flood risk and cultivating community co-benefits.
• Green infrastructure case studies of Miami-Dade County, Milwaukee, and Pierce County.
• The Nature Conservancy's new web-based tool to help planners, practitioners, and local officials identify nature-based solutions for managing flood risk at various scales and community contexts. This webinar will include a live demonstration of the tool.

PRESENTER

Jacob Pederson

Jacob Pederson facilitates and staffs Floodplains for the Future, a collaborative partnership that supports multi-benefit floodplain projects in the Puyallup, White & Carbon Rivers. Hosted by Pierce County and supported by the Floodplains by Design Initiative, Floodplains for the Future includes project teams working on flood mitigation and safety, habitat restoration, landowner outreach, agricultural land conservation, and monitoring. Pederson is a Tacoma native and has master's degrees in Public Administration and Environmental and Forest Sciences from the University of Washington.

PRESENTER

Jill Dixon

Jill Dixon is a senior urban planner at Sasaki who enjoys working in interdisciplinary teams to tackle complex urban issues. In Boston, she was part of the Climate Ready Boston team, where she focused on social resiliency and communicating climate risks, and earlier researched the city's vulnerabilities as part of Sasaki's Sea Change project, which recently won an ASLA award for communications. Beyond Boston, her resilience work has included coastal resiliency in the Mississippi Delta and economic resiliency in Northeast Ohio and Detroit. Dixon holds a master's in urban planning from Harvard's Graduate School of Design and dual degrees in architecture and economics from Clemson University.

PRESENTER

Karen Sands, AICP

Karen Sands is the director of planning, research and sustainability for the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) where she's worked for over 15 years. With a career spanning 25-plus years, Sands has held a number of planning positions in the public and private sectors in Wisconsin, Maine, and New York. She is an Envision Sustainability Professional (ENV SP) and serves on boards of directors for the Water Quality Board of the International Joint Commission, Southeastern Wisconsin Watersheds Trust Inc., Northwest Side Community Development Corporation, and Discovery World. She is also secretary for the APA's Wisconsin Chapter.

PRESENTER

Katherine Hagemann

Katherine Hagemann is the resilience program manager for adaptation within the Office of Resilience at Miami-Dade County, Florida. Her work focuses primarily on climate change and adaptation to sea level rise. Before moving to Miami she also worked on coastal climate adaptation during the post-Sandy Rebuild by Design and National Disaster Resilience competitions. She earned her Master of Environmental Science from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Science where she studied how cities can use a hybrid of gray and green infrastructure to adapt to rising sea levels and reduce flood risks.

PRESENTER

Nate Woiwode

Nate Woiwode manages the Nature Conservancy's efforts to build the case for employing nature and natural systems to manage flood risk and build resilience in coastal and riverine communities across the United States. Previously, Woiwode worked for the Long Island chapter for eight years, where he helped guide many of the Conservancy's post-Sandy efforts in New York and regionally, including managing engagement in the $1 billion Rebuild by Design competition and served as a key member of the team convened by Gov. Andrew Cuomo to develop long term recommendations on how to make New York State more resilient to the impacts of climate change. He also led the Coastal Resilience Team for the Long Island Chapter and was a co-lead of the New York State Climate Change Team. Woiwode also helped craft and pass New York's Community Risk and Resilience Act and the Seagrass Protection Act as well as serving as a member of the Staff Steering Committee of the NYS Sea Level Rise Task Force.

MODERATOR

Jim Schwab, FAICP

Jim Schwab joined the American Planning Association in November 1985. Originally the assistant editor of Planning, APA's monthly magazine, he joined APA's research department in August 1990. He serves as the co-editor of the APA monthly publication Zoning Practice. Schwab is the manager of APA's Hazards Planning Center in the Chicago office. He was the project manager and general editor for the FEMA-funded APA Planning Advisory Report, Hazard Mitigation: Integrating Best Practices into Planning. He also served as the primary author and principal investigator for Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery: Next Generation(2014), produced by APA under a cooperative agreement with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Past Webinars

• Post-Disaster Temporary Housing: Urban Planning Considerations (March 23, 2017) CM | 1.0
• Subdivision Design and Flood Hazard Areas (December 2, 2016) CM | 1.0
• State Resiliency Initiatives: From Issue to Action! (September 22, 2016) CM | 1.0
• Combining Climate Adaptation and Hazard Mitigation Plans (July 7, 2016) CM | 1.0
• Know Your Dam Risk! (May 6, 2016) CM | 1.5
• Adapting Urban Vacant Land to Mitigate Hazards (February 26, 2016) CM | 1.0
• Hazard Mitigation Implementation (December 10, 2015) CM | 1.0
• Hazards Planning and Resilience: The Elected Official's Perspective (October 19, 2015)
• Climate Change Adaptation & Resilience (June 30, 2015) CM | 1.0
• The Role of Hazard Mitigation in Post-Disaster Recovery (May 6, 2015)

View presentations from past webinars